Mexican marines captured the leader of the nation’s most feared drug trafficking group, Los Zetas, along the northern border with Texas, marking a major blow to a crime gang with tentacles deep within the United States, authorities said Monday night.

Miguel Angel Trevino was detained before dawn near Nuevo Laredo, the border city across from Laredo, Texas, that is a stronghold for the drug trafficking syndicate, Eduardo Sanchez, a spokesman for the Interior Secretariat, said in a brief news conference.

Following a lengthy intelligence operation over a period of months, authorities launched an operation in which a naval helicopter forced a pickup truck carrying Trevino and two other men to stop along a remote dirt road at 3:45 a.m., Sanchez said. No shots were fired. The vehicle contained $2 million in cash, and eight firearms, he added.